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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

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Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#861

Post by fzeroracer »

cwperkins wrote: post #242

Its evident to me that our strategy to combat misinformation is not going great at the moment. I've been on Reddit for over 13 years and the site has gone through many changes. What if we changed our thinking from removing/flagging bad content to fostering rich discourse? I'll use r/politics for example, I currently do not think there is productive or rich discourse being had there. If you have had a different experi…

> What if we changed our thinking from removing/flagging bad content to fostering rich discourse?

You can't foster rich discourse without removing/flagging bad content. That's like trying to clean a litterbox by adding more litter rather than removing the shit. Eventually the whole thing is just going to stink.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#863

Post by peterkos »

itchyjunk wrote: post #151

Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment. Is there no way to consider social media a…

> youtube algo's screwing up content creator

A slightly different problem, but Tom Scott did an excellent video on the automation of the copyright system on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

In summary, auto copyright checking solves Most copyright issues, to a degree that no other solution can really provide. And while there are a small (yet very unfair) number of false positives, the benefit that the system as a whole allows far outpaces that downtrend: for YouTube to exist!

With regards to fact checking, I'd be more interested to hear how many people who read those kind of "fact flags" actually change their opinion in an easy case (flat earth, climate change, etc.). Honestly, the problem of "true truth" might never be solved, but so will the cause of incompetence never disappear.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#864

Post by bad_bats »

shiado wrote: post #227

How can the "private platform so they can do whatever they want" crowd reconcile their views on election interference using social media in 2016 with this latest move by Twitter? If they can do what they want with their platform why did it matter in 2016 and why does it not matter now?

That's a false equivalence.

Arguing that a platform shouldn't have to host arbitrary content isn't the same as saying that a platform should get to host arbitrary content. If you run a website I'd argue that you shouldn't have to post other peoples' content on it - that doesn't mean I think you should get a free pass to post any illegal content you like - which was the issue with election interference.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#865

Post by sizzle »

Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

Open source a transparent, government sponsored free-speech communication platform that clones Facebook functionality for organizing information in an intuitive way for the most tech unsaavy person.

Outright ban all user tracking and profiling transparently with annual code audits and watchdog groups that can punish those in charge for not adhering to this, no advertisements, no selling data, and put 18f on the job of designing/developing it based off sound human principles, no army of behavioral researchers and Psychologists A/B testing bait-and-click engagement dark pattern metrics that penetrate deeply into the reward system of our neuroplastic brains and yanks on that lever of addiction formation with ease. Cut the bullshit and I'm on board. I'll even work for free on this if you promise to make it a reality, hell consider it a public utility if you have to so it stays funded and maintained.

The Advertising industry needs to be lobotomized and severely scaled back to more traditional forms of reaching people where they are, not vacuuming up every ounce of data their movement, click, search, and vitals generate unbeknownst to them. Good riddance.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#866

Post by perl4ever »

chlodwig wrote: post #595
Traster wrote: post #36

I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway: There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-re…

Free speech for all political factions on major public forums is the cooperate-cooperate quadrant of the prisoner's dilemma. If forums controlled by the blue faction defect and start censoring the red faction, the red faction needs to threaten to retaliate in order to scare the blue faction into cooperating again. It's simple tit-for-tat. This is game theory 101. Surely, it's clear here that having the actual head of…

A lot of people have been wrong about what the current President could or would do. Ann Coulter comes to mind.

It's not really clear why other people enable the President, which is the underlying reason why you can't reassure people that he's ineffectual.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#868

Post by sillysaurusx »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #858
kgin wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even more concerning than that. Threatening to shut down private companies -- not for limiting speech, not for refusing to distribute speech -- but for exercising their own right to free speech alongside the free speech of others (in this case the president). There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech, regardless of how you interpret the right to free speech.

> There is no right to unchallenged or un-responded-to speech There are forms of government where certain forms of speech cannot be challenged. Well, not safely anyway. I should know, I lived for 20 years in that sort of place (Eastern Bloc kid).

What was that like?

I tried to make the question more precise, but I’m not quite sure what I’m asking. I guess I was hoping to hear more from you because normally I’ve only heard it from books, not from an actual person who lived under it.

pg’s trick for getting interesting answers is to ask “What surprised you the most?” That may be relevant here — if you had to pick some surprising differences, what specifically would they be?

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#869

Post by yibg »

isoskeles wrote: post #801
yibg wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in this case no one is being censored. It's not like the president isn't allowed to post and is having his "freedom of speech" taken away. This is more like his speech is being responded to, and he doesn't like that others can challenge what he's saying. The very antithesis of free speech.

Applied unequally. Reminds me of these old fact checks during the election: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-pence-acid-wash-fact... > Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falsely claimed Clinton “acid washed” 33,000 personal emails to delete them, calling it “an expensive process.” The FBI said Clinton’s tech team used BleachBit, which is a free software program. It does not use chemicals. These sorts…

So fact check the fact check. The response to perceived violation of free speech (fact checking) isn’t blocking speech.

Re: Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

#870

Post by ken »

tuna-piano wrote: post #133

There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet. After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries). So what should the social media companies do? Censor…

Twitter created a special rule [1] for public officials who violate their Terms of Service. They feel there's a genuine "public interest" in being able to see (and respond to) these communications, even though they would not normally be allowed on the platform.

Are people aware that there are two classes of users on Twitter, subject to different sets of rules? Twitter hides this fact, for some reason, but it's something that ought to be glaringly obvious to anyone viewing any of a user's tweets.

[1]: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/publicint...

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